Thursday, July 28, 2016

A final reminder to those who are using Windows 7/8/8.1. The 29th of July is the last day for the free upgrade to Windows 10.

Before doing an upgrade I do two things. A full system image backup and a separate backup of my data. You never know when something may be wrong with computers.

Over the past year most computers have upgraded with minor issues that can be resolved. Things like incompatible programs that leaves remnants that then have to be removed manually. A few computer have not been able to be upgraded. The worst was recently. It was a HP8100. After installing Windows 10 the video card driver, USB driver and Ethernet driver all didn't work. Very difficult to work with a computer when so many things didn't work. Worse was HP did not provide any new drivers for Windows 10. The outcome was a restore to Windows 7. So the upgrade doesn't always work, but probably around 90% of the time it does.

Is it a big deal if you don't upgrade. Not really. The computer you have will continue to last for some years and when you're ready you can then update your computer and operating system. Whether you upgrade or not is based on your own needs and desires. I personally would lean towards upgrading particularly if you have a Windows 8/8.1 system. Windows 8/81 will end up being like Windows Vista. The operating system people preferred to skip.

The Share My Location web app needs to remain open for you to continuously share your location with someone else. On my ancient iPhone 4 I have Safari, Opera and Chrome to choose from. Most times I use Safari. I decided to test what would happen if someone opened a new tab and the result was interesting.

Safari suspended the activity from the background tab, but Opera and Chrome did not. This could be useful when someone is sharing their location and wants to use the browser to perhaps catch up on the news whilst they travel. Perhaps even check out a public transport timetable. In this case Safari would stop sharing the location, but Opera and Chrome wouldn't and would thus be better to use in this situation.

It makes sense for Apple to suspend activity and that would reduce battery usage. Browser makers make choices and most of the time we're not aware of the choices and compromises. By luck I stumbled across a useful bit of knowledge that makes Share My Location more convenient for Apple device users. In this case it is as simple as using another browser.

Desktop browsers do not suffer from this limitation, but of course desktop browsers usually don't have access to a GPS.